Although praised by many, including Stephen King, Arthur Machen’s work remains a niche interest (with some exceptions) largely overshadowed by work of other late-19th- and early-20th-century writers of the supernatural and gothic. In the introduction to this book Sanna provides a thorough introduction to Machen’s life and work. This is followed by a dozen careful essays grouped into three sections: “Human Beings and Their Environments,” “Darwinism and Degeneration," and “Spirituality." Two of Machen’s most familiar texts, The Great God Pan and “The Bowmen,” are treated in separate essays, but the volume is more valuable for the discussions of Machan’s less-known work—his detective stories, his prose poetry, and some of his other novels... Sanna’s own contribution, “Heterotopic Spaces in Machen’s Fiction,” invokes Foucault in a sophisticated treatment of alternative worlds. Although Machen died in 1947, this collection leaves one with the sense that he was well rooted in fin de siècle decadence.
